If We Can't Protect
by jivvin
Summary: "Shit, who am I kidding, we were simply relaxed. Riding the high of our awesome victory, we've let all our guard down, and so were not ready when, not even two weeks after the invasion, Loki's returned and fucked us all up." Or, Loki tries to possess Tony again, Bruce intervenes, and it all goes downhill from there.


A/N: So, this is me trying to write from first-person POV, so please bear with me. I hope you'll enjoy my take on the subject.

Warning: it gets a bit dark towards the end and contains an off-screen character death.

* * *

We were not ready.

Yeah, that's the only excuse I can think of. I mean, _hooray_, we've won and shit, and the alien army was defeated, its reindeer leader serving his time in whatever fairytale prison his Viking buds came up with, but we were still left sorting through the warzone. Manhattan's been smashed to all hell, we were still regrouping, rebuilding, adjusting back to the normal pace…

Shit, who am I kidding, we were simply _relaxed_. Riding the high of our awesome victory, we've let all our guard down, and so were not ready when, not even two weeks after the invasion, Loki's returned and fucked us all up.

We didn't even know what the hell was happening, at the moment. Sure, _later_ Thor would sit us all down and go all Older Edda about the treason and the troll uprising and how that golden-horned asshole had escaped, got his glowstick back and swore revenge on "those who _dared_ to blah-blah-blah…" Right then, we didn't know that and I'm not really sure we cared.

I mean, all _I_ really cared about was the broken glass littering the floor of my Tower, warm sticky blood dripping from my brow, and the pissed off demigod, coming at me with hate and malice clear in his eyes.

"I've been looking forward to this, Man of Iron," he said, a wicked smile to his voice. "Last time your metal heart came as a surprise to me, but have no worry," he smiled even wider, making another step towards me and raising his right hand slightly. I saw his spear materializing in it, seemingly out of nowhere, pointed at me. "…I know we can get _around_ it."

Yeah, I admit, I felt a little worried at that. Just a little though, because I knew that the others were currently in the Tower too, that JARVIS has no doubt alerted them and that someone was surely already on their way here. That's all I needed – not a _rescue_, thank you very much, but a minute distraction to get the suit on.

"Yeah, you know what, _no_," I replied. "I may have somewhat of a reputation around here, but I'm damn sure I'm not into…"

And that's when I heard one of the doors open and my distraction come in in a rushed fashion.

"Tony, are you…" Banner began in his "casual worried" tone, but then quickly fell silent at the sight of mine and Slytherin's little standoff and the overall destruction that's accompanied it.

Well, Banner it was then. Sure, he wouldn't have been my first choice on the matter, but, on the other hand, he kind of would. And by other hand I mean, of course, the Hulk.

So yeah, I was already going for my bracelet (at least _that one_ was prepared), when something startled me. Loki has made… a sound, light and melodic, like a laugh, but one that had nothing to do with humor or happiness or any of the nice things that are usually associated with it.

"If there was _one _I wished even _more_," the demigod all but purred, his face twisted in a savage, black delight as he suddenly lunged at Banner, appearing almost instantly at his side, the tip of the spear barely touching the other man's chest. It all took a second, one blurry moment, and the bastard's sickeningly sweet words – "Embrace your new master, beast" – are still sinking in in my head as I see Banner's body go rigid with fear and the glowing mist flowing from the gem in the spear, through its blade, and into Banner, making him shudder as the blue filled his eyes and…

…was suddenly chased away by a brilliant green.

I don't (and I'm not sure I want to) know what Barton and Selvig were feeling while being possessed. Did they even know what was happening, what was about to come? Because Banner did, only too well, know that Loki was about to _take_ his mind, _own_ it and _rape_ it, and let his distorted, mutated _body _on a senseless rampage against everyone and everything in its path. So he resisted. He, and that other guy in his head.

Banner let out a growl that was also a cry of pain and clutched at his head violently. "N-no, no, I…" he muttered, as his eyes reverted briefly to brown and then back to blue and to green in a matter of seconds. "I… _no_," he pleaded almost inaudibly before _roaring_ again, shaking himself and making what was left of the cladding glass tremble.

It was a disturbing, disgustingly hypnotizing thing to watch, his eyes changing color so rapidly and all of his body in irregular spasms, a sight that will not leave my nightmares for years to come.

Loki, on the other hand, seemed to find it extremely fascinating.

"By all means, creature, struggle away," he said, taking a small step back. "Grant some dignity to your last sentient moments."

The next several hours are a blur, and I don't claim to remember much of it.

I _do_ remember Banner crying out, one last time, right before something inside him shifted and he… _stopped_, looked at me, his eyes wide open and _brown_, and then simply fell to the ground without a single sound. I remember how I was suddenly very afraid and very _angry_ and just wished to _cause pain_, and that the repulsor blasts coming out of my palms were somehow not a surprise.

Remember that Rogers was already in the room then, in "civilian" clothes, but with a shield in his hands, that he yelled at me something about going after Loki, and I yelled something back, after which he briefly kneeled over Banner's limp form, told me "He's alive, now we _have to go_!", how Thor suddenly _materialized_ outside in a burst of lightning in the clear sky, and then a lot of wind rushing around me.

The chase was a long one. Loki did not actually possess a Tesseract to power him, but even without it he was incredibly hard to catch, especially with his doubles constantly leading us off the track. He decimated the Quintjet, with Barton and Romanoff barely having the time to evacuate, and rendered my newest suit almost irreparable by the end of the big troll fight.

Made it all the more sweet to personally lock the door of his little glass cell at the end of the day.

"There is not much of him left that was not yet devoured by despair," was all Thor has said before leaving the containment area of the Helicarrier to go to the infirmary with the rest of us.

There I remember a hospital bed, and Banner lying on it, eyes open but empty, and someone asking "Is he going to be alright?" and the doctor replying "No, he's not", and "But he's awake?", and "But he's not aware" and a long long speech about the difference between wakefulness and awareness, about extensive neurological damage and abnormal brain chemistry, and how radiation-induced mutation of all the patient's systems resisted the treatments, and how the hope for recovery was extremely slim, and how Bruce Banner, one of the world's most brilliant men, was now basically a vegetable.

For several minutes we have all just stood there in silence. Rogers and I, bruised all over, Romanoff with her hand in a sling, Barton nursing a concussion, Thor relatively unscathed, stood over Banner lying in his bed with cerebral activity barely enough to sustain basic vegetative functions of his body.

I'm not exactly big on this whole "team interaction" thing, but even I know how Barton's been beating himself up for not fighting harder against Loki's spell, for not struggling enough. We've all told him that's bullshit: you can't fight against yourself.

Turns out you can. Turns out, if you meditate often, drink a lot of tea and spend your every waking moment in a battle for consciousness over your Id you can fashion your own mind into a weapon so sharp and fierce that it will short-circuit your brain before letting _yet another_ alien influence into it. Kind of like a spy biting through a cyanide pill so as to avoid being captured.

Banner chose to go down before endangering us. Me.

_He saved your life. He saved your fucking wretched life once again. And what exactly have _you_ done to protect him?_

"What are his chances?" I don't remember who asked that. Probably Rogers.

"He's the strongest man I know," I replied, my eyes fixed on Banner's. "If anyone's got a chance to pull through it would be him. Then again, it's because of that fucking strength that he's here in the first place."

"No," Barton deadpanned from his spot near the door. "It's because of Loki."

Even Thor remained silent.

They told me I was not the same after that. I don't know. I don't know how you can stay the same after watching one of your best friends give away his life, for you and everyone else, the way Banner did that day.

But, at least, when I was walking down to the containment block an hour later with the Mark V case in my hand, I could've just said that it wasn't really me. Especially when my path got suddenly blocked by a couple of master assassins.

"We know where you're going and we know what you're going to do," Romanoff said evenly.

"And what, you two wanna stop me or something?" I all but snarled in reply.

"Don't be ridiculous," Barton intervened, his expression completely blank. "We want our turns too."

"Thor's with Fury on the upper deck now, Rogers has promised to keep them there for thirty to forty minutes," Romanoff added. "You got the cameras covered?"

"Sure thing. Let's go."

That day I learned that the Hulk's glass cage was actually quite soundproof for something so transparent. And that, contrary to the popular opinion, revenge can be _very_ satisfying. In a cold, dark sort of way that leaves a part of you irreparably broken. But no matter how much we could've wanted it (_how much he deserved it_), we were _not_ inhumane about it. The whole thing took total of seventeen minutes, plus eight minutes for a clean-up and three more to get back to the med ward.

Still, though I don't really know how they do funerals in Asgard, I figure they'd better use a closed casket for this one.

* * *

The machines are beeping quietly. The others have stopped coming, but I didn't. I think I'll stay with Banner a little bit longer. Just until he comes to, so not that much at all, right? I think that maybe I owe it to him.

It's all gonna turn out fine in the end. I'll synthesize a brand new fucking element if that's what will make it all fine, I'll kill more gods and make more weapons if that's what it fucking takes to wipe the sour taste of platinum out of my mouth.

'Cause that's what we do, Earth's Mightiest Heroes. All five of us. If we can't protect one of our own, you can be damn sure…

His eyes are open and empty and brown.

It's already been months.

He'll wake up any minute now.


End file.
